A Few Words From Me Anak Krakatau has form for making headlines it would rather not, though I’ll say this for it, this time it let the world’s rarest rhino off comparatively lightly. Ujung Kulon has now sat out two Krakatau eruptions unscathed, which either says something reassuring about that stretch of coast or something
Six new ASEAN Heritage Parks were declared this week. What happens to them next depends on money nobody has fully worked out how to raise. There is a particular kind of conservation news that reads as an unambiguous win right up until you ask the second question. The first question, the one that made headlines
Nakai-Nam Theun is being assessed for international recognition. Its most famous resident hasn’t been confirmed alive since 2013. No scientist has ever seen a saola in the wild. Not once, not briefly, not through binoculars from a safe distance. Everything known about the animal comes from a handful of camera-trap images, a few individuals that
A Few Words From Me As the region embraces green season, news on the ground is typically thin, and that’s the case this week as some countries in the region move from headline announcements to the quieter work of planning ahead. That’s especially true in Laos, where authorities are making good use of their time,
A Few Words From Me Lampang doesn’t get that much attention – even from people like myself who’ve spent years in Thailand. This week its lac-dyed textiles earned official protected status, the same kind Champagne has, which feels overdue in the best way, a craft that could easily have been left to fade (no pun
A decade of peer-reviewed research and a protection law barely a year old point to two very different answers on how to see the world’s biggest fish responsibly. Ninety-three percent. That is the proportion of tourists at Oslob, in southern Cebu, who were found swimming closer to a whale shark than the town’s own ordinance
A Few Words From Me Three governments seem to have landed on the same idea this week: that how people move through a place matters as much as where they go. Thailand has started training its first proper hiking guides, launched at Khao Yai, one of the national parks that together see more than ten
Southeast Asia spent fifty years destroying its most useful coastline. It’s finally growing back, and Vietnam has the receipts. Nobody puts a mangrove forest on a postcard. Ask someone to picture Southeast Asia and you get white sand, a longtail boat, maybe a temple roof catching the light. Nobody pictures a tangle of grey roots
Around the Region Monsoon rain has put five eastern Thai provinces on flood watch this week, with harvests at real risk, while much of Western Europe swelters through drought conditions. Against that backdrop, this issue leans on recovery and renewal. Southeast Asia’s mangroves have quietly flipped from decline to regrowth, driven mainly by Indonesia and
Three new UNESCO biosphere reserves landed in June, including a first for Timor-Leste. What the designation is actually betting on, and what it asks of anyone who visits. Three places joined a very short list this June: UNESCO biosphere reserves, one of them a first for its country entirely. A biosphere reserve isn’t just a
Malaysia and Vietnam Just Added Six Parks to an Exclusive List. The Badge Is the Easy Part.
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Da Nang Just Wrote a 219-Point Rulebook for What “Green” Actually Means. Here’s What’s in It.
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